In the field of remote wild land fire suppression, fires often extend into road-less areas of extremely rocky or forested terrain characterized by steep changes in elevation, which are inaccessible to tanker trucks. In these cases, tanker trucks are driven as close to the fire line as safely possible. A main 2.54 cm (1″) supply hose is extended as far as possible toward the fire, and it may be extended by, or branch off with, one or more smaller fabric lay-flat type hoses, called pencil or “toy” hoses. These hoses use male and female garden-thread type fittings. The lay-flat hoses are light weight and can be easily rolled up and stowed in a backpack.
The ends of the pencil hoses are fitted with a garden-type nozzle used for fire suppression in the area reachable by those hoses as limited by the pump-supplied water pressure. For more distant locations, individual firefighters don 18.93 liter (5-gallon) backpack-type canvas or neoprene reservoirs or bags, called “bladders”, which permit them to range on foot even farther into the brush than can be reached by the supply and pencil hoses. The backpack bladders have a bottom fitting including a female QD connector into which is jacked a short flexible hose and manual slide pump having an adjustable nozzle. This allows firefighters to walk into more remote and difficult terrain carrying their own reservoirs of water or fire suppression foam to douse hot spots, knock down grass fires, and attend to fire suppression in difficult-to-reach areas.
The weight of a backpack filled with 18.93 liters (5 gallons) of water is more than 18.14 kg (40 pounds), which firefighters must carry in addition to their other heavy equipment such as shovels, chainsaws, hard hats, axes and heavy boots. But 18.93 liters (5 gallons) of water is exhausted quickly, requiring firefighters to repeatedly trek back over rough terrain to the water source to refill the backpack bladder. While the source is typically the pencil hose extended from the parked tanker truck, it can be any hose attached to a portable pump used to supply water under, pressure from streams, lakes or waterfalls. Because of the service requirements, the back-pack reservoir, slide pump, supply hose and the various fittings must be robust.
Standard issue for many wildfire departments includes a backpack reservoir, such as: the Indian Fedco Collapsible (bag-type) or Galvanized Steel Backpack Firefighting Pump, available from Forestry Suppliers Inc. of Jackson, Miss.; the Flexpak collapsible canvas bag-type backpack tank from Firehouse International Inc. of Anchorage Ak.; or the Wildfire Backpack or Neoprene Collapsible Backpack available from Wildfire Equipment of Lachine, Canada.
The current method for refilling these reservoirs is to remove the backpack from the back, unscrew the threaded top cap, insert a hose, and allow the pack to fill with water while the firefighter holds it upright to prevent spillage. Large hoses connected to the tanker truck are generally stepped down to fit a length of standard, 1.9 cm (¾″) diameter pencil hose that typically terminates in a plastic ball valve fitting. Once the garden hose is inserted into the backpack bag, the valve is rotated open to allow water to flow.
Soft-sided, collapsible backpacks, the preferred embodiment of such packs (preferred for their compact size, foldability and ease of transport when empty), are made either with a screw cap at the bladder top and a pump hose port at the lower end, or with a combined cap and pump hose port located at the bottom of the bladder. Regardless of bladder design, both are filled by holding the opening in an upright position during filling. For some bladders, this means turning it upside down. Both types of bladders must be supported during filling, as it is the water itself which fills out their shape. At the same time, the hose must be held in the other hand to prevent it from slipping out of the relatively large cap hole under its weight and the pressure of the flowing water. In addition, for bottom-cap bladder, they must be taken off the firefighter's back; the bladder cannot even be filled by others helping the wearer. Often, water overflows the bladder as the firefighter struggles to support the bag while turning the shut-off valve. The result is a muddy, wet pack to put on his or her back before hiking back out into the remote wildfire area and waste of valuable fire suppression water.
One aspect of the unsolved problem in the art is that backpack tanks must be removed for top filling, or removed and inverted for bottom filling. In addition, standard garden hose quick-disconnect fittings neither match backpack fittings and nor are they sufficiently robust for wildfire field work. Garden-type female quick-disconnect fittings do not have an auto-shut-off feature, that is, they do not have an internal valve that automatically closes to prevent leakage when the male quick-disconnect fitting is removed. Fittings mis-match is deliberate; the purpose of the mis-match is to prevent parts from being used for the wrong application, that is, garden-type fittings cannot be used in hydraulic applications. Thus, a standard garden-type female QD connector cannot be used on a backpack tank bottom cap to permit bottom-up filling of tanks.
Hence, there is an unmet need in the art for a fast, efficient system of filling backpack reservoirs that precludes the need to dismount the bag or tank, remove the top or bottom cap and then hold a supply hose inside the bag while simultaneously supporting the bag to prevent spilling, and which permits filling directly from a supply pencil hose without dis-connecting any of the pencil hose fittings, yet which which system is robust enough for the service conditions encountered in fighting wildfires.